Broad Branch Market

The reopened Broad Branch Market has become a real asset to the neighborhood. They have worked hard to cater to their audience and have become a combination of a convenience store and gourmet market.

The best feature, in my opinion, is the butcher counter, stocked with high-quality meat from local suppliers. The meat is pricey, with beef mostly at competitive prices and pork and chicken running high.

The big draw, though, is the prepared foods, which are generally quite good and reasonably priced. Our favorites are the fried chicken (not the best in the city -- Founding Farmers or General Store would contend for that -- but quite serviceable) and the prime rib or any other roast.

The roast chicken is uneven -- lately they have been underdone -- and they have stuck too much with stews through the summer.

That said, we had a great meal last night with their Malaysian beef stew, which we combined with North Carolina long-grain rice that we cooked at home and sauteed baby eggplants that we had bought at the New Morning Farm market on Saturday. These were small and tender and cooked very quickly in olive oil and garlic. Simple, quick and delicious.

Broad Branch also has great bulk foods, spices and teas. They have made an effort to stock good oils and other specialties along with some plain old convenience staples.

What they haven't mastered is produce. They don't give over much space to it and stocking is pretty spotty. It's not being able to count on finding the produce you want that keeps it from being a reliable one-stop shopping. If I have produce on my shopping list, I just go straight to Wholefoods and don't waste my time stopping at Broad Branch. It may just be a limitation imposed by the size of the store, but the co-op on Grubb Street manages to keep a produce section stocked.